Building an Internal Container

Weekly insights to turn pain, trauma, and the human experience into opportunities for growth, purpose, and meaning

Sometimes reverent, sometimes raucous. Beholden to my whims and ever-changing interests.

Issue 18 // Read Time: 4 Minutes 37 Seconds

Building an Internal Container

I was reading my favorite author, James Hollis, this week, and he presented a BEAUTIFUL excerpt written by Jung. This excerpt spoke to some of the things I frequently see in my practice and perfectly describes the goal of therapy and, quite honestly, life in general.

So, this week, I want to present that excerpt and expand on each section with some thoughts of my own.

This week you will get:

Building the Container

Tolerating ALL of it

Looking Boo in the Eyes

Increasing Your Capacity to Hold the "Shit"

"The principal aim of psychotherapy is not to transport the patient to an impossible state of happiness but to help him acquire steadfastness and philosophic patience in the face of suffering."

- Jung

Okay, the above is the first paragraph in the passage written by Jung, and this is incredibly important for us to grasp.

I sometimes feel frustrated because people come to me and expect me to give the magic key to happiness. Or to tell them a secret that will fix all of their problems.

And I frequently have to disappoint people by telling them I have no such wisdom or cure.

Inevitably, this leads to a conversation about what this work is about, and I have to explain to them that it is about increasing their capacity to handle what life will throw at them.

Because life will throw things, it will be an endless round of joy and sorrow.

Jung is telling us outright that making happiness the goal is an impossibility. It is not a state that can be maintained forever, and we are misled if we consciously (or more often unconsciously) seek this out.

Instead, we are trying to accept that we will not always be happy and construct the inner fortitude to hold that fact.

Thats where I start thinking about building an internal container to handle whatever life throws at us.

When I say building a container, I mean having the internal and external pieces to help us tolerate life's turmoil.

That starts with a keen understanding of our nervous system states, the ability to regulate when we are escalated and activated, and the ability to rest when we have respite.

Then, it requires us to attune to our biology. To make sure we are eating, drinking, sleeping, and exercising.

Then, we can look outside ourselves and focus on our immediate environment. We can surround ourselves with people who uplift us, who we can confide in, and who do not make us feel bad for being less than happy or having problems.

Constructing this container is a lifetime of work, and it will constantly shift. Your capacity is always different.

So it's not like you just do it, and then it's done. You keep returning to this and performing maintenance constantly.

"Life demands for its completion and fulfilment a balance between joy and sorrow. But because suffering is positively disagreeable, people naturally prefer not to ponder how much fear and sorrow fall to the lot of man.

So they speak soothingly about progress and the greatest possible happiness, forgetting that happiness is itself poisoned if the measure of suffering has not been fulfilled."

- Jung

Tolerating Fear & Sorrow for the Sake of Happiness

Okay, these paragraphs are beautiful, and they hold so much wisdom.

In the first line, Jung tells us that life "demands" a balance between joy and sorrow.

Jung repeats a universal motif expressed elsewhere in phrases like, "You can't have light without the dark" or "You can't feel pleasure without pain."

The point is - we KNOW this. We know this is the fundamental truth of existence, yet we often forget.

We get so attached to the sorrow and the fear, and our ego clings desperately to its pursuit of comfort and security that it fights with all its might to protect us from these energies.

But that is a fruitless pursuit. It leads to repression and suppression and fundamentally confuses your purpose for life.

The ego gets in the way here if we let it and it attaches a sense of self and worth to the human experience. We think we are doing something wrong if we feel less than happy.

If we are feeling happy, we think we are totally in control of that, and our infinite wisdom got us there and will always keep us there if we control enough variables.

But again, this is all an illusion.

As Jung says in the second paragraph, we forget we can't feel happiness without suffering. If we skip the suffering (through avoidance, repression, suppression, & denial), we are limited in our capacity for joy.

Why Avoiding Doesn't Work Forever

"Behind a neurosis there is so often concealed all the natural and necessary suffering the patient has been unwilling to bear."

- Jung

Here, he directly calls out what happens when we avoid contact with sorrow.

I frequently describe this process as getting into contact with your "badness" so you can learn that it won't destroy you.

Many people have never taken the time to honestly examine the parts they don't like, avoid, or are afraid of.

Because getting in contact with that requires us to feel things we don't want to.

Ironically, it's avoidance and defense from badness that keep you stuck. Not the badness itself.

It is an incredibly liberating experience when a person feels this.

For any of you who have played Super Mario before, this process is demonstrated in Mario's confrontation with the ghost Boo.

When you have your back turned toward Boo, he continually chases you, sneaking up, hoping he can get close enough to consume you.

But when you turn around and look Boo straight in the eyes, he freezes, no longer able to hunt and consume you.

Bringing your badness into the room and working through the neurosis that avoidance brings requires you to look Boo in the face.

It's possible. I promise—that's why I'm doing this work.

Thank You!

If you made it this far - thanks for sticking with!

I love that you are interested in exploring yourself in the pursuit of growth and expansion.

And I love that you are diving deeper into the unconscious patterns that limit our capacity as a species to transcend this paradigm.

You are becoming the change you want to see in the world and that is incredibly inspiring!

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your journey ✨✨

With Love,

Christian